Skios

27

“But you’re not Oliver Fox,” said Georgie finally, after the shimmering hot silence of the afternoon had gone on and on. “You’re Wilfred somebody.”

She was on the lounger again, with the towel in place around her middle, but now she had turned onto her back. She evidently felt that after all this time she knew him well enough. He, likewise, felt that after all this time he knew her well enough to take an occasional look, particularly since she seemed to have her eyes closed behind her dark glasses, though her two breasts, sprawled softly outwards, had still not seized his imagination as strongly as those two small and now concealed moles.

“Take a good long look, if you’re going to,” she said. “You’ll do something to your neck, twitching back and forth like that. Why did you tell the taxi driver you were Oliver Fox?”

“I didn’t tell the taxi driver I was Oliver Fox,” said Wilfred.

“Well, someone did. He told me he’d driven you here. Oliver Fox. He said you were waiting for me.”

Wilfred tried to remember exactly how the conversation had gone. Phoksoliva … Euphoksoliva … Yes, of course.

“It was him,” he said. “The taxi driver. He told me.”

“The taxi driver told you were Oliver Fox? What, and you believed him? And you’re a famous scientist, are you, Wilfred? What else have taxi drivers told you?”

* * *

The afternoon went hotly on and on. A small cloud was created out of empty air, moved slowly across the sky, and dissolved again, exhausted, before it got anywhere.

“What I don’t understand,” said Wilfred — no, Dr. Wilfred, he was Dr. Wilfred—“is that this pal of yours is supposed to be coming in a taxi. He’s not renting a car? How are you proposing to get around?”

“What, to art galleries? Famous cathedrals and so on?” She laughed. Little soft trembles ran through her breasts, like almost imperceptible waves in a calm summer sea. “I don’t suppose he was thinking of getting around very much.”

No, of course not, thought Dr. Wilfred. Art galleries and famous cathedrals were probably not what either of them had at the forefront of their minds.

“Haven’t you got a girlfriend, Wilfred?” she said. “No? What — just a wife? Or no wife, even?”

He was not going to get drawn into a discussion of his own domestic arrangements. In any case, what he was thinking about was the still unmade bed in the villa. They would get out of it sometimes, he thought. To sunbathe, perhaps. Take a dip in the pool. What else? Nothing. Back to bed again. Yes, why should we need a car? Or rather they. Why would they need a car?

“Food, though,” he said. “Meals. Groceries. You weren’t planning to live on a loaf of frozen bread and a packet of frozen peas all week?”

“I don’t know what the arrangements are. I suppose Oliver’s thought of something.”

There was a silence while they both thought about the possible contents of Oliver’s thinking.

“Or probably not, actually,” she said. “I don’t think he thinks. Not that sort of thinking. Just something comes into his head and — woof! — he does it.”

Woof, he does it. Of course. Woof, they both do it. Dr. Wilfred suddenly found this feckless pair and their brainless pleasures profoundly distasteful.

“No business of mine, of course,” he said, “but what about this other friend of yours?”

“Patrick? He’s in Turkey.”

“He’s in Turkey. Oh. So as soon as Patrick turns his back you’re off with this one, are you?”

“What do you mean? It’s not like it’s, you know, a regular arrangement! I’ve only met him once! For about five minutes!”

You heard this kind of thing about young people these days, thought Oliver, thought Wilfred, thought Dr. Wilfred, but you never really believed it until you actually came face to face with one of them.

“Only met him once?” he said. “For five minutes? Oh, that’s all right, then.”

“Well, you’ve got to be spontaneous, haven’t you? You’ve got to go along with things. Anyway, we’ve sent each other lots of texts.”

Lots of texts. Of course. Plus sliced bread and frozen peas. Or rather, now, no sliced bread and no frozen peas.

Then back to bed.

* * *

There was another small cloud overhead … He closed his eyes. When he opened them there was no cloud.

“Now I come to think about it,” said Georgie, “I see why he hasn’t shown up yet. It’s just like you said — there’s a perfectly logical explanation. It’s because he hasn’t bothered to listen to his messages. He doesn’t know I’m here. He thinks I’m arriving this evening.”

The two moles, the sliced bread, and the unmade-up bed all vanished from Dr. Wilfred’s head as he took in the implications of this. “You mean … he may not come until this evening? But that’s when my lecture is! I need the taxi before then! I need the taxi now!”

“You’ll just have to relax and have a day off. I shouldn’t worry. They’ll think of something else to do. People often don’t turn up for things.”

He saw the faces in the hall. Distinguished faces, important faces — people who had flown from Athens and even farther afield for the Fred Toppler Lecture. He heard the eager anticipatory hum die away as someone stepped up to the lectern to introduce him. Not to introduce him, though. To explain that for reasons beyond their control … Or that Dr. Norman Wilfred was unfortunately indisposed … Or quite frankly that no one knew where he was. He had simply failed to show up.

And where he would be was here, toasting sliced bread with some entirely irresponsible young woman who didn’t seem to think it mattered whether people honored their professional obligations or whether they simply sloped off and jumped into bed with people they’d only known for five minutes. Not that she would be jumping into bed with him, of course, because at that moment she would be jumping into bed with someone else, and what he himself would be jumping into, if anything, would be the taxi that had brought the man she actually was jumping into bed with; and he would be on his way to run into the lecture hall, even more embarrassingly than if he had never shown up at all, just as everyone left.

“Though of course,” said Georgie, “now I’m thinking, Why hasn’t he bothered to listen to his messages? And I know why — because he had to hang around for half an hour with nothing to do, and he went into a bar, and he saw some woman, and he brushed the hair out of his eyes and gave her his ridiculous grin, and now he won’t be coming this evening, or tomorrow, or all the rest of the week.”

Dr. Wilfred thought about this. He might not be running into the lecture hall just as everyone left. He might still be here. For the rest of the week.

“So you’re in charge now, Wilfred,” said Georgie. “Food, yes. Eating. You’d better start thinking how we’re going to find something.”

He already was. He was looking at himself in the days ahead, roaming the hillsides. Bargaining with peasants for bread. Stealing fruit off trees. Strangling stray pheasants. Milking the wandering goats. He had an old song running through his head that he hadn’t heard since he was a boy: “If you were the only girl in the world, and I was the only boy…”

“It’s probably only for a few days,” said Georgie. “Sooner or later someone’s going to notice you’re missing. Your wife or someone. Send out a search party.”

Sooner or later, yes. In the meantime, though …

Already the disappointed owners of all those respectfully upturned faces had vanished from his head as if they had never been. So had the lecture, and his professional obligations and reputation. They had all been pushed into oblivion by the two moles. And the three condoms in the right-hand inside pocket of his jacket.

And the words of the song. “If you were the only girl in the world,” they murmured to him, over and over again, as if they had taken on a life of their own, “and I was the only boy…”